50 Years of Public Computing at the University of Illinois

From the Conference Chair

For two days here in the Alice Campbell Alumni Center, eleven remarkable local innovations
in public computing will be under the microscope. Founders, innovators, early users, and
scholars will talk about how they did it and what it means.

We invented these treasures here, on campus and off, north and south of Green Street, in collaboration.
Now we're bringing all this experience to light, as a single body of work, to use it
to point a way to future innovation that can serve all of us.

We're doing this conference when $7.2 billion in broadband investment in communities is
about to jump off, $30 million of that right here in Champaign-Urbana. Because of this, the
nation is going to be experimenting with and implementing all kinds of new technologies in
local communities. Quiet as it's kept, the University of Illinois knows a lot about this. Why
leave the nation to reinvent the wheel when we have done so much heavy lifting?

The idea behind each session — until the final one — is to get an understanding of that moment
and this moment; that innovation and today's opportunity. In other words,

The Idea Behind Each Session

How did the project come into being?

What did it accomplish?

What do we need to know or do to sustain such innovation going forward?

Our collective wisdom will help us understand and institutionalize the University of Illinois'
identity as a leader in what we now call community informatics.

I'd like to acknowledge gratefully the sponsorship and support of the Graduate School of
Library and Information Science, the Department of Computer Science, the Office of the
Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement, the Ubiquitous Learning Institute in the College of
Education, CITES, the Illinois Informatics Institute, the College of Media, the Community
Informatics Initiative, the University Library, the Center for Democracy in a Multiracial
Society, and Wolfram Alpha. And I'd like to thank John Unsworth, Rob Rutenbar, Molly
Tracy, Diana Stroud, Patti Grove, and our team of CI Lab and other students for steering us
so carefully.

Finally: good speakers depend on a good audience. Please listen hard, and speak up often.
Thank you very much for coming.